Keir Starmer: an ungrateful beneficiary of Brexit Labour has reaped the benefits of leaving

This was the general reason to think that departure from the EU might at least give the Left a chance to recover its old position in British politics, if it were bold enough. But there was another more parochial reason, to do with the relationship between Scotland and England.

In the past, when there was a close election (as in 1964 and February and October 1974), a Labour government at Westminster could have a minority of English seats but secure a majority through its reliable base in Scotland. But for the past decade or so, since the rise of the SNP, Labour has effectively had a permanent reduction of 40 seats in its representation at Westminster, compared with previous elections; if, for instance, it had secured as many seats in Scotland in 2017 as it had as recently as 2010, it could have been within striking distance of forming a government.

But what has seldom been appreciated is that the rise of the SNP was intimately bound up with Britain’s membership of the EU: as soon as the SNP dropped its old hostility to the European Union in the mid-Eighties and adopted the stance of “independence within Europe”, it began the climb to its dominance of Scottish politics. The logic behind this was perfectly clear: independence for Scotland if both England and Scotland remained in the EU was virtually costless, since almost everything guaranteed by the Act of Union — above all an integrated economy for the two nations with no trade barriers — would also be guaranteed by the EU treaties. The only stumbling block might have been the currency, but that was unlikely to dissuade Scots at some point from voting for independence, knowing that much of their old life would continue unchanged.

This could not be the case if England were outside the EU and Scotland in it: for the first time for centuries (and arguably for ever), there would be a hard border between the two countries, with immense disruption to every aspect of their lives, and almost everyone who has seriously considered this possibility has recoiled from it. In my 2016 article, I argued that because of this, if Britain left the EU, the cause of independence for Scotland would be dealt a potentially fatal blow, and the Labour Party could begin to rebuild its Scottish base. The fact that the Scots voted (albeit narrowly) to stay in the EU is widely misunderstood. The question put to them was whether the UK should leave the EU, and anyone who wanted a costless independence for Scotland would naturally vote No. But that is a very different question from” Should Scotland stay in the EU if England leaves? The SNP for obvious reasons has misrepresented the result, constantly describing it as a vote by Scotland to stay in the EU — but in fact it was nothing of the kind.

It is against this background that we should think about the recent calamities of the SNP. An air of corruption now hangs about it, as it did for many years over the Labour Party in the west of Scotland. But if its leaders still displayed some sense of genuine confidence in the party’s aims, it is probable that the corruption would be forgiven. Rather, the SNP’s real problem is that it is impossible for its leaders to sound convincing, in the face of the enormous challenges that Brexit has posed to their movement. All they can produce are empty platitudes and a refusal to face the obvious facts, and voters can hear the desperation in their voices. It is revealing that John Swinney scrapped the post of “minister for independence” immediately after he became leader of the Party.

I argued in 2016 that in both these respects — the general sense of new possibilities, and the collapse of Scottish nationalism — the Labour Party should be the principal beneficiary. The advantage to it of the changing situation in Scotland was obvious, but the freedom properly to differentiate itself from the tired managerialism of the Conservatives was also important.

Hints of this were already to be found in its surprising success in the 2017 election, when the party was led by someone who was not at all managerial, and when it had not as yet clearly repudiated the result of the referendum. But the signs were always there. The central paradox of EU membership all along was that it buttressed the economic policies which most Conservative politicians favoured — this, after all, was why membership was originally forced through by a Conservative government against the wishes of most of the Labour opposition. As a result, when Brexit was finally delivered, the members of the Conservative government were at a loss as to what to with it, since fundamentally they had been comfortable with many of the EU’s economic policies. They looked rudderless because they were rudderless. As in the case of Scotland, the electorate did not need a conscious analysis of the situation: they simply needed to recognise the symptoms of a political party which no longer had a clear agenda, and which had consequently descended into pointless internal faction fighting.

The Labour Party has duly reaped the benefits. It has risen very quickly from the catastrophe of 2019 — caused above all by what had become its open rejection of Brexit — to a position where it may well hold an absolute majority after the next election, bucking the trend of all other European Social Democratic parties. And it has been able to do so largely because of Brexit.

It is tempting for its leaders to think that it is the party’s official hostility to Brexit which has led to this, but 2019 illustrated that its hostility was a liability; rather, it is the structural changes that have resulted from Brexit, and not Labour’s opposition to it, which have helped it. The worry for sympathisers with Labour, however, is that the party hierarchy has failed to learn this lesson. The timorousness with which Starmer is approaching the current election suggests very strongly that he wants to return Britain to its economic and social identity prior to June 2016; not necessarily in the EU, but so closely aligned with it that Scotland can dream of independence again, and there will be no break with managerial politics.

Seen in this light, Starmer looks as if he is going to be an ungrateful beneficiary of the Brexit which he struggled so hard to subvert, and which he (probably) intends if Prime Minister effectively to reverse. His ingratitude, however, is not merely morally objectionable: it is also unwise. Suppose that in a few years Britain is once again within the EU, to all intents and purposes — say in a relationship similar to Norway’s. What will stop a resurgent Scottish nationalism, once again wielding the slogan “Independence in Europe”? And what will stop a resurgent radical Right, embittered by the return to managerialism?

By bringing Britain closer to the EU, Starmer would ultimately return the Labour Party to the dismal condition it was in before Brexit. At the moment, it looks as if in Britain — uniquely in Europe — a historic party of the Left is in pole position, and there is no effective standard-bearer for the radical Right. But the uniqueness of the British situation is a product of Brexit, and anything that undermines Brexit will sooner or later undermine Labour too.